Mintsy recently announced a launch of its new cloud mining service as the first digital currency cloud mining company to use proof-of-reserves, accomplished through cryptographic proof-of-hashrate.

Bitcoin Magazine sat down with Marshall Long, who is the CTO of Cryptsy, and more recently CTO and board member at Mintsy, to discuss what he says is unprecedented innovation in the realm of cloud mining.

Mintsy provides users with malleable contracts, which assuages any worries on being locked into a contract they no longer need. Long says users are “able to sell their remaining contract time on the Mintsy marketplace where other folks may want a shorter contract and can bid on contracts that are up for sale by the user.”

Mining the Future

At the time of this post, Mintsy is made up of 20 people, and is the result of a joint venture between Terraboss Inc. and digitalBTC. The development team is spread out between the United States and London, while the majority of the accounting takes place in Australia. DigitalBTC is an Australian company that is publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange under the ticker DCC.

With a bitcoin mining pool going strong at more than 5 PH/s, Mintsy offers SHA-256 and Scrypt contracts ranging with flexible three-month and six-month contracts, although “more exotic algorithm contracts will be online soon.”

Thinking Outside The Box: Cryptographic Proof of Hashrate

Long, a serial entrepreneur in the fields of Bitcoin, drones and manufacturing, explains that previously, many cloud-based mining services “got away with lots of bitcoin in the beginning because nobody demanded proof of what they were selling.”

He explains that Mintsy will circumvent all of the problems relating to the auditing that their accounting staff may have to deal with, since all of their hashrate information will be transparent.

Naysayers are given proof that the cloud mining company is not double-selling hashrates, instead running a 100 percent full reserve by having all of their information accessible on the blockchain. Long has been working with Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd to implement the cryptographic proof-of-hashrate for Mintsy. This feature is still in development with a planned release in mid- June.

Another feature that Mintsy will have is the ability for users to use the website’s service and rent out their rigs to other users for a fee, much like Betarigs.

In the meantime, users can limit their luck variance by allowing their customer base to “take their contract and point it to any pool.” When users don’t put all of their eggs in one basket, the choice in picking their mining pools is “not only transparent, it’s more efficient since your [one] pool is not lucky all the time.”

But is Cloud Mining still profitable?

It’s no surprise that conventional mining is not as easy as it used to be.

“If your electricity bill is very high, then there is no way you can make money mining even with the most advanced of chips,” explains Marshall. To him, cloud mining not only helps those who don’t have access to cheap power, but also provides new users with a way to ease into mining for a very small fee. The company’s smallest contract costs a little under $20, and users can always trade contracts on the Mintsy marketplace.